Isabel Gondel

Artist and Strategic Consultant based in Barcelona.

Biography
Isabel Gondel works at the intersection of music performance, research, philosophy and business. She holds an MBA in New Technologies and Digital Transformation from the Catalonia College of Industrial Organization, a Master’s degree in Music Research from the Catalonia College of Music, and a Bachelor’s degree in Music Performance from the Murcia Conservatory of Music. She has also received training in quality assurance for European Higher Music Education institutions and programs, through various European agencies such as MusiQuE, AQU Catalunya, and AQUA Andorra, among others. In parallel, she pursued major studies in Philosophy at several universities.

For over twelve years, she has worked with multiple European organizations, governments, universities, and private-sector companies and agencies —including the MusiQuE Foundation in Brussels since its inception (a collaboration that led to her being named an honorary member of the organization); the Higher Institute of Law and Economics of Barcelona, where she was appointed co-coordinator of its negotiation program at New York University (NYU) and led the implementation of its first cross-border undergraduate degree; the Barça Universitas Innovation Hub; Northumbria University in the UK, where she was appointed as lecturer; AQU Catalunya; and the Spanish Ministry of Education, among many others.

Her work has focused on the transformation of the Higher Music Education industry and wider cultural ecosystems. She has lectured on topics such as Professional Development, Research, Student Politics, and Cultural Policy, and contributed as co-author to the influential paper Musicians as Makers in Society: A Conceptual Foundation for Contemporary Professional Higher Music Education (2021), led by Helena Gaunt, former Head of Innovation at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, published in the prestigious Frontiers journal; as well as the handbook How to Increase Students’ Voice in Higher Music Education (2017) under the scope of the European Association of Conservatories in Brussels.

Her career has been shaped by a commitment to youth and cultural policy, serving in the European Association of Conservatoires (AEC) for almost a decade, where she was the only renewed member for eight consecutive years, appointed invited member of the AEC General Council for four years, working to integrate the voice of young professional musicians to protect and promote their rights at the European Union and within the organization, as the early promoter of the European Performing Arts Students and Alumni Association (EPASA), eight years before its foundation. She was a founding member and the first executive director of the Spanish National Federation of Music Students project (FNESMUSICA). She was unanimously elected representative of the Arts in the Spanish State Confederation of Student Associations (CANAE), served as a counselor on the Superior Council of Artistic Education of the Ministry of Education—contributing to the evaluation and official accreditation of educational programs in the artistic sector—and acted as the generational spokesperson for the performing arts.

In 2018, she led the negotiation process that resulted in a national legislative reform ensuring equal access to scholarships for all higher education students in the performing arts across Spain. She became the fundraising Manager and Director of the first two national congresses in Spain to unite, for the first time in the country’s history, young representatives from the performing arts to collectively address the artistic, cultural, and educational development of the country. In parallel, she had already spent four years laying the groundwork for what would become the first European organization representing the voice of performing arts students, with the financial support of the European Commission and the European Association of Conservatories (AEC). 

She established her artistic practice in Barcelona, where she studied at the Catalonia College of Music under the guidance of Luca Chiantore and focused her research on Spectralism and the sound imagination of composer Mauricio Sotelo. This marked the beginning of a journey of musical exploration and sound identity, leading to her first collaborations in Barcelona's cultural scene with projects such as Habitando a Lucía, a cinematic music collaboration alongside Venezuelan producer Lucciano Bonelli and Colombian artist Andrea Serna. The work addressed the forced abandonment of homes due to political violence, presenting an allegorical reflection on inhabiting and self-inhabiting, themes closely linked to the conceptual foundation of her music, premiered in Buenos Aires International Film Festival in 2024, just before the release of her first Music Album Introspection - Improvisations for piano in 2025. 

Her work has always been aligned—and continues to align—with the vision, mission, and objectives of the Sorbonne and Bologna Declarations in 1998 and 1999, promoting a knowledge-based Europe contributing to a developing economy. Since 2014, she has implemented key strategies in the field of youth in the arts and culture, through music and its education, to accelerate the development, strengthening, and consolidation of the European Higher Education Area for the Music sector, as part of the Cultural and Creative Industries. In 2020, she participated in the Vienna Declaration on Artistic Research, contributing to the advancement of artistic research as a recognized and rigorous academic field across Europe.

Currently, she is developing herself as an independent professional, while opening spaces for her creative and artistic practice as an independent artist, performer, improviser, composer, and music producer. She aims this way to build connection, growth, and human potential across all ages, contributing in this stage to society through personal, one-to-one mentoring, education and art not to lose the vision ‘‘out-of-the-box’’, while continuing to engage with institutional responsibilities through research, education, and cultural cooperation.